I am absolutely thrilled to publish my very first blog as a Senior Analyst here at Forrester and am looking forward to providing you with a lot of exciting research and thought-provoking insights on what continues to be a hot topic in the technology industry: Social Media in B2B. As many of you know, social media is evolving at a very fast pace, and one of my goals is to keep you posted on the latest trends we are seeing and how you, the tech marketer, can utilize these insights to create effective social strategies for engaging with your customers.

How did I wind up here at Forrester? Well, prior to joining the talented TI Tech Marketing team in April, I spent 14 years at Sun Microsystems, working in various senior marketing roles. I was fortunate enough to lead some pretty groundbreaking campaigns that utilized social media and other emerging marketing tactics. These projects ranged from executing basic marketing strategies using blogs and YouTube to very complex, multi-faceted social media campaigns to drive new product adoption for Sun's software and Java product groups. Lots of fantastic stuff that is worthy of a separate blog post!

After Sun was acquired, I spent the past year at Oracle as a Global Campaigns Manager responsible for Java, cloud computing and enterprise architecture initiatives, where social media was also a big area of focus for demand generation activities. A few months ago, I was presented with an amazing opportunity to join the Forrester team, and, to make a long story short, I have now hit the ground running with a very rigorous B2B social media research agenda and a speaking engagement at next week's Forrester IT Forum in Las Vegas.

Categories:

All of us in the technology industry get caught up in the near-term fluctuations and pressures of our business. This quarter’s earnings, next quarter’s shipments, this year’s hiring plan . . . it’s easy to get swallowed up by the flood of immediate concerns. So one of the things that we work hard on at Forrester, and that our clients value in their relationships with us, is taking a few steps back and looking at the longer-term, bigger picture of the size and shape of the industry’s trajectory. It provides strategic and financial context for the short-term fluctuations and trends that buffet all of us.

I am lucky to co-lead research in Forrester's Vendor Strategy team, which is explicitly chartered to predict and quantify the new growth opportunities and disruptions facing strategists at some of our leading clients. We will put those predictions on display later this month at Forrester's IT Forum, our flagship client event. Among the sessions that Vendor Strategy analysts will be leading:

"The Software Industry in Transition": Holger Kisker will preview his latest research detailing best practices for software vendors navigating the tricky transition from traditional license to as-a-service pricing and engagement models.

"The Computing Technologies of 2016": Frank Gillett will put us in a time machine for a trip five years into the future of computing, storage, network, and component technologies that will underpin new applications, new experiences, and new computing capabilities.

Categories:

Tech is back! Just as our in-house economist Andy Bartels predicted, the first quarter numbers from the big tech vendors confirm that IT investment is on a growth trajectory again. Check out the recent Q1 numbers from Intel and IBM, for example.

And these results represent more than just a rebound from the nasty 2008-09 recession. We forecast that the IT industry is entering a multi-year period of innovation and growth, when spending growth on technology goods and services will be a substantial multiple of overall GDP growth in the US and around the world. Check out Andy’s latest forecasts here.

For more on the opportunities and challenges that the next wave of tech industry growth will present to vendor strategists, join us in Las Vegas later this month at Forrester’s flagship event, the IT Forum. We will be presenting our latest research on Smart Computing, the Personal Cloud, and the approaches that vendor strategists must take to stay in front of “the next big thing.” Hope to see you there!

Forrester’s IT Forum 2010 in Las Vegas (May 26-28) and in Lisbon (June 9-11) is around the corner, and our team is looking forward to the opportunity to share our latest experiences, research insights, and strategies for maximizing the value of your technology and vendor investments.

The theme this year is "The Business Technology Transformation: Making It Real." As firms embark on the transformation from IT to BT, sourcing and vendor management professionals must assume new roles. They must help the business understand key technology trends and the trade-offs of new and legacy sourcing models. They play a crucial role in optimizing technology spend -- and in making sure their firms are taking advantage of newer models like SaaS and cloud services where it makes sense.

We’ve got a series of great sessions focused on sourcing and vendor management strategies for making BT work across major areas of technology investment in applications, infrastructure, services, and telco. The sessions include:

Categories:

This is my first post as the new Research Director for the Security and Risk team here at Forrester. During my first quarter as RD, I spent a lot of time listening to our clients and working with the analysts and researchers on my team to create a research agenda for the rest of the year that will help our clients tackle their toughest challenges. It was a busy Q1 for the team. We hosted our Security Forum in London, fielded more than 443 end client inquiries, completed more than 18 research reports, and delivered numerous custom consulting engagements.

In the first quarter of 2010, clients were still struggling with the security ramifications of increased outsourcing, cloud computing, consumer devices and social networking. Trends have created a shift in data and device ownership that is usurping traditional IT control and eroding traditional security controls and protections.

We’re still dealing with this shift in 2010 — there’s no easy fix. This year there is a realization that the only way that the Security Organization can stay one step ahead of whatever business or technology shift happens next is to transform itself from a silo of technical expertise that is reactive and operationally focused to one that is focused on proactive information risk management. This requires a reexamination of the security program itself (strategy, policy, roles, skills, success metrics, etc.), its security processes, and its security architecture. In short, taking a step back and looking at the big picture before evaluating and deploying the next point protection product. Not surprisingly, our five most read docs since January 1, 2010 to today are having less to do with specific security technologies: